something.'
'Just between us.' She tensed, waiting for the inevitable punch, another black-and-blue mark to add to the collection of marks Rock's affection left on her. To her surprise he kissed her brow instead.
By Friday morning Tess had still not been able to get past the hound of hell guarding Macauley's telephone. She had to be on the right track. Then she remembered she was an investigator, not a reporter. Time to lie again. She put on a thick Baltimore accent and dialed the number, which she now knew by heart.
'Excuse me, ma'am, could I speak to one Abner J. Macauley?'
Her long Os and nasal tones worked like a mating call on the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, whose Bawlmer accent Tess could have been parodying.
'He's here, hon, but can I ask who's calling and why? He don't get around that well, you know.' No, just occasional forays downtown armed with baseball bats.
'Oh sure,' she said. 'I'm from O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill, and we wanted to talk to him about his settlement.'
The woman squealed with excitement. 'Oh hon, he's taking a nap, but I know he wants to hear about that. Can you call back in a half hour?'
'Actually we'd like to send one of our people out to talk to him in person. Could he see someone in an hour?'
'Well, that's during the noon news, but I guess it would be OK. You tell him just to come on out. You know the way? We're off Holabird Avenue, past Squires, the Italian restaurant?'
If Tess had not lived in Baltimore all her life, she would not have had a clue what the woman was saying. 'Holabird' came out 'hahlaburd,' while Squires was 'squi-yers.' Italian, of course, was pronounced with a long 'I.'
'Sure,' she replied, almost slipping into her normal voice. 'By the way, it's a girl who's coming out, not a gentleman. But she's OK.'
'OK, hon. See ya!'
Despite Tyner's repeated exhortations to dress like a grown-up, Tess sensed the Macauleys would be more comfortable with someone who looked as if she had gone to Catholic school with their daughter or dated their son. She paired a plaid skirt with a white blouse, then added a man's navy vest.
In her Toyota she headed east past Canton, past the quaint row houses of Greektown and Highlandtown, leaving the city limits and heading into Dundalk. On a map East Baltimore County looked promising. It sat on what should have been prime real estate, the meandering coastline of the Chesapeake Bay, with tiny points and inlets. And perhaps it was gorgeous, once upon a time, a time before Bethlehem Steel. But there was no Dundalk before Beth Steel, which had built the community in 1916 to house its workers. In the 1950s, when steel production was at its height, red dust from the mills had fallen steadily over the community, sifting over everything. Cars, clothing on lines, the rooftops and windowsills. They called it 'gold dust' and were grateful for it, because it meant the shipyards were busy and jobs plentiful.
There was still gold in Dundalk, but not so much for those who lived there as for the men who represented them in court. Few households had been spared asbestosis or one of the other degenerative diseases associated with the onetime wonder fiber. One lawyer alone had built an empire on asbestos, earning more than $250 million in a single class action suit. Now he owned the Orioles. Some of the widows of Dundalk were doing pretty well, too, but none had a sports franchise, not yet.
But, as Mr. Miles had, Tess wondered why Mr. Macauley was so focused on money. Technically he was one of the lucky ones. There were thousands of men throughout Baltimore who had been diagnosed with asbestosis, or the related cancer, mesothelioma. Asbestosis-white lung-was said to be a particularly horrible way to die. The lungs collapsed slowly, until you felt as if you were suffocating. And it wasn't enough to prove asbestos had done it. You had to know which brand of asbestos was poisoning you if you wanted to collect.
Yet Abner Macauley had won in court, one of eleven plaintiffs in the last of the preconsolidation trials. He was due $850,000, and he had won it before he died. The other rewards ranged from $900,000 to $2.1 million, according to the clip Feeney had found, for a total of $15 million. How had the jury decided the costs of eleven men's lives? Macauley had worked a relatively short amount of time-a mere eight months during World War II-and had been able to show he was never exposed again. Someone who could enjoy the money should get more, Tess decided, not less. The scale of suffering seemed inverted to her.
The Macauley house, off Holabird Avenue as promised, was a hideous 1950s-era ranch, a sprawling structure of brick and sea green trim that looked as if it had crawled out of the bay and died on this lot.
Small yappy dogs threw themselves at the Macauleys' storm door when Tess rang the bell. They didn't seem particularly vicious, but she wouldn't have turned her back on them. After almost two minutes, which seemed longer with dogs panting and snarling, a short, chubby woman came to the door. She wore cherry red pants, a red and white striped jersey, and toilet paper rolls in her tinted strawberry blond hair. Tess knew the look. It was one of the favorite local methods for preserving a salon-made beehive.
'You must be the girl!' the woman said cheerfully. 'Just let me get this last bit of paper off my hair. One of those mornings, I guess you know.'
'Sure,' Tess said, feeling agreeable now that she was on the threshold of an important discovery. On the drive over she had convinced herself Macauley had to be involved in Abramowitz's death. She hadn't figured out the details, but her intuition was practically buzzing.
Inside, the house was early Graceland, decorated with ceramic monkeys and kittens. Mrs. Macauley led her to the family room at the end of a long dark corridor. Here, two recliners sat side by side, facing an old-fashioned console television whose color had taken on a distinct lime tint. TV trays stood in front of both chairs, and two hot microwave dinners waited next to sweating cans of National Bohemian. It was how the O'Neals might have lived if their fortune had been a hundredfold less.
'We always eat lunch in here,' said the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, although she had never introduced herself. 'Abner loves his programs.'
'Where
'He'll be out directly,' Mrs. Macauley said, eyes fixed on the television screen. Her beehive, now unwrapped, was remarkable, a towering structure whipped from hair normally as thin and runny as egg whites. It wasn't a look to which Tess aspired, but she admired its defiance of nature and gravity.
She stared at a door at the end of the corridor, eager to lock eyes with Macauley. In her imagination everything would be revealed in a glance. Her only fear was that her earnest face would inspire an inadmissible confession on the spot.
Finally a door swung open and Macauley stepped out, dragging a reluctant animal on a thin, pale yellow leash. She saw him give the leash a yank, swearing under his breath. A
He moved deliberately, with the measured tread of someone quite sure of himself, a hideous yellowish smile frozen on his face. As Tess's eyes began to adjust to the dim light, she realized he didn't have a pet with him, but something on wheels. Squinting into the dark hallway, she saw the yellow leash was a tube, leading to some contraption at his feet.
'Sweet Jesus Christ,' she said under her breath.
What she had taken for a grotesque smile was a breathing tube stretched across his face. The 'pet' was his portable oxygen tank. Macauley came down the corridor as slowly as a debutante bride moving across rose petals at the cathedral. And when he finally arrived in the family room, Tess was the one ready to burst into tears, equal parts frustration and pity.
'I've only been on the tank a month or so,' he said by way of introduction. 'Takes some getting used to.'
'Certainly,' Tess said, bobbing her head in inane affirmation. She was still trying to reconcile this frail old man with the wrathful monster she had imagined.
'Vonnie says you have news of my check.' Each syllable was breathy and measured, a sibilant wheeze. 'I was
